Da Capo
by Aussie Oswin
Summary: All Loki wanted to do was settle down, perhaps buy a small island on Vanaheim, train a Bilgesnipe, that kind of thing. Alas, apparently the Norns have different ideas. Ideas that suspiciously aline with the ambitions of a certain astrophysicist. Loki should have know time travel was always going to be a risky endeavour. Lokane.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Thor/Marvel etc. or any of the characters you see within this fic, though I do enjoy borrowing them for my nefarious uses...**

**I hope you enjoy, and please tell me what you think. I'm also in search of a beta reader so if any you think you can help me out please message me. **

* * *

Falling was nothing like flying.

Loki knew. He had tried both after all, and neither, he could say with absolute certainty, was a particularly enjoyable experience. Both were uniquely uncomfortable in the fact that they granted the younger prince little control over where he was going, due to both physics and an embarrassing lack of skill respectively.

Thor, of course, _fervently_ disagreed, often describing to a rapt crowd the joys and freedoms of evading the sticky fingers of gravity. Thor went about most things fervently, especially when those things concerned his tempestuous younger brother, and then they tended towards fervent disapproval or disagreement of some nature. Nevertheless, Loki supposed that while he could blame his brother for a great many things, his love of flying was not one of them. Thor was Asgardian, and Asgardians were, at least within the bounds of Loki's keen mind, an altogether flighty people, light and shallow, like the wisps of sunshine hair and open, golden smiles that characterized much of the court's veneer. The only areas Loki could recall in which Thor had any depth to boast of were his own opinions and his very public sentimentalities.

In his own right Loki much preferred to keep his own two feet placed firmly on the ground (or, of course, between the fabrics of reality, one could never afford to be too fastidious). As children, Thor and Sif had often called out on this cowardice, and now Loki wondered if perhaps their juvenile eyes had happened upon an unlikely shard of truth. The Norns certainly must have thought something of it, because for the second time within the space of five years, Loki found himself falling through the black satin sheets of the void.

Loki had to admit that the situation was partially his own fault. He had forgone the level-headed maturity that he had so long prided himself upon for this petty act of vengeance. Sentiment, a quality that he so often criticized in others, paved his little hell-bound avenue as he walked. To be fair to himself, he'd had an unhappy and damaging childhood, or so the SHIELD employed psychologist had told him. She had obviously read up on her Norse mythology because he had not uttered a single syllable in their sessions. It had been SHIELD's agreement with Thor, that Loki should face punishment in Asgard as long as he received therapy first. It was obviously the man with the eye-patch's idea of a joke.

And so for second time in a short while Loki found himself drifting through the uncomfortable vacuum of space completely and utterly bored. He was a little annoyed with himself in all honesty. His own inability to entertain himself spoke of a lack of imagination he'd expect from the likes of Thor and his three amigos, certainly not his own creative genius. But there is only so much you can do in a void. During his first time drifting through nothingness he'd been too caught up in his own emotional turbulence and existential angst to get a really good feel of the place. This time he'd like to think that he'd matured enough as a person to truly appreciate the dullness of the situation. He supposed it was like having to walk through a gallery filled entirely with noodle art. Except blacker.

This time of course, Loki had absolutely no intention of falling into Thanos' grip. This time he wasn't going to let himself fall through any old slip in the fabric of the universe. This time he wasn't going to make the same mistakes. This time he'd 'die' and stay dead. Maybe buy himself an island on Vanaheim, train a bilgesnipe, who knew, the universe was a funny place.

And so it had been for the past whoever knows how long that Loki drifted among the nothingness of the void in two minds about his own magic. On one hand, it had allowed him navigate the delicate rapid of time and transport himself to before the whole Thanos disaster and erase his 'slightly' inconvenient future so that he had a fresh slate. Maybe it had been for less than morally flawless reasons, he wasn't a perfect man, but, as Loki often justified to himself, thousands of people were no longer dead. In fact, he could be hailed as a hero. On the other hand, his magic had dropped him right in the middle of what he privately and not a little shamefully called his 'void years'. Not that he wasn't deliriously happy the spelled worked at all it was just that his brain was hungry for knowledge and his traitorous heart was hungry for adventure. His stomach was hungry for roast potatoes, but he preferred not to even open that kettle of fish.

And so for months more Loki fell, keenly aware of what his own loneliness could do to him. The first time he fell it had only amplified his anger and insecurities, this time however, he felt the void grasp onto something completely different: a tender spark of madness. Not for the first time Loki asked himself if he really minded all that much.

It was many weeks again after he began his internal debate about the importance of sanity that he came across a slip in the universe. Slips in the universe were not rare occurrences, in fact there were several in Asgard alone, privy to his eyes only and he suspected that he had passed many more on his drift through the void. It had been just too dark however for him to notice them. Loki had often tried to explain the concept of slips to Thor, explaining that space was like fabric in that it was woven together with thread, or in this case, matter. When you hold fabric up to a light you can see tiny holes where the different threads meet. Those were slips and if one simply knew what they were looking for and how to cross them, then they could easily be used for quick and easy travel across long distances. Thor soon forgot each time Loki told him.

Loki carefully glided through empty space towards the slip, his own body twisting and manoeuvring in order to let him side step reality, letting himself come apart, atoms flying like miniature comets towards a different plane of existence before coming together again.

After a moment of slippery compression, he found himself falling again, this time however, through open air, and despite everything he took in eager gulps, lungs burning from the adjustment. When he finally hit the soil, he didn't so much mind the fantastic pain from impact or the general ache in he muscles, he just couldn't remember ever being so happy at the feel of solid ground beneath him. After lying in the dirt under the harsh rays of a despairingly familiar sun for what felt like a lifetime, he let his Asgardian costume dissolve, adopting something more appropriate for the realm. "Midgard", he scowled as he lifted himself up, voice harsh from disuse.

The last thing he heard was the sound of tires screeching and a woman's scream before everything went black.

* * *

Jane Foster sat in shock, one hand clutching her mouth, the other the wheel of her minivan, a growing sense of deja vu settling in her stomach.


End file.
